Blessed Are the Married Who Mourn

the moment of production when it feels we are called to do exactly what we are doing

the unquestioned love between spouses in the moment of the diagnosis

the freedom of getting on the airplane at the start of the vacation

There are glimpses that it didn’t have to be this way, but there are also moments in which we are made very aware that things are this way:

the senseless crime

the petty fight

minor frustrations

major failures

We are fallen people in a fallen world and this world has the ability to remind us of that fact.

Marriage has the ability to remind us.

We can be deceived into thinking perfection is attainable. We can discipline good habits, train secret fixes, figure out ourselves and think we have our spouses figured out so that marriage becomes easy.

Until it doesn’t.

Because it can’t.

No matter our effort or ability, perfection is never attainable. Frustrations will come. Failures will occur. Confusion will ensue.

If I can’t figure out myself half the time, how can another person figure me out?

If I can’t decide what I want, how can another person predict my desires?

If I can’t communicate my feelings, how can another person comfort my heart?

We are fallen people in a fallen world and we cannot save ourselves, much less each other.

No matter how good marriage is, it hurts; we hurt; we fail it and it fails us.

The Biblical response to those failings is not what we expect. The Bible doesn’t hammer us to do better. It calls us to mourn what marriage could never be.

Nothing reveals to us the potential of love like marriage, yet nothing reveals to us our own inability to love perfectly like marriage.

Because we fail, we mourn.

We grieve our inability; we grieve our imperfection; we grieve the imperfection of our spouses; we grieve the sinfulness of this world.

We mourn and in the mourning we find comfort.

We find comfort in the mourning as we grieve what marriage cannot be in order to appreciate what marriage is.

It is the binding together of two imperfect hearts for the hopes of discovering more about God.

It is the safest of test labs to discover grace.

It is a partnership of unconditional love which reveals our unconditional failures.

Marriage was never meant to perfect us. It was never meant to complete us. It was never meant to do so many of the things we assume it was meant to do.

Marriage was meant to assist us in the process of transformation toward being like Jesus.

Jesus wept over the sin of Jerusalem. He mourned for the failings of his disciples. He hurt for the world in which he lived and in which we now live.